BPM: Cats On The Ceiling

Give tempo and time signature

The speed at which music is played/performed is expressed as beats-per-minute or BPM. The more BPM, the faster the music goes. Most music uses the same BPM range as the human heartbeat: 60-140 bpm.
A base of 16 means that the bar is divided in 16 parts of length 1/16. The most common bases are 4, 8, 16 or 32. Use base 12 or 24 if you also want calculations for triplets.
This is also used in "Quantising": the process of snapping notes to the nearest beat subdivision.

Quick BPM overview

Beats per minute
92.6 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
23.2
Length of 1 beat
0.6479 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.5918 sec
Beats per second
1.5433 Hz

Fractions for base 16

These are some common fractions (handy for setting delays, LFO and modulation parameters)


1/16
1/16
6.25%
162 ms
6.17 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
324 ms
3.09 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
486 ms
2.06 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
648 ms
1.54 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
810 ms
1.23 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
972 ms
1.03 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 134 ms
0.882 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 296 ms
0.772 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 458 ms
0.686 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 620 ms
0.617 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 782 ms
0.561 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 944 ms
0.514 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 106 ms
0.475 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 268 ms
0.441 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 430 ms
0.412 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 592 ms
0.386 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
3 888 ms
0.257 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 184 ms
0.193 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
7 775 ms
0.129 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
10 367 ms
0.0965 Hz

How to use this page

If you have a 135 BPM song, and you want a phase modulation of 4 beats: that is 1.778 sec
If you have a 98 BPM song in a measure of 3/4, and you want to know how long 8 bars is: 14.7 sec
If you have a 128 BPM song, and you want an audio delay of 2/3 of a beat: this is 313 ms
If you have a 80 BPM song, and you want an LFO of 5/4 of a bar: this is 4687.5 ms

Musical genres

These are some popular modern music genres with typical BPM speeds.

Slow dub/reggae
Fast dub/reggae
Deep house
Slow house
Electro house
Trance
Dubstep
Hard house
Jungle
Drum&Bass
Gabber

Music calculators & converters

Beats-per-minute
Convert BPM to Hz, bar length, fractions
Audio delay
Calculate audio delay length in msec
Music Frequency
Convert pitch to musical note and wavelength
Song length
Calculate song length from BPM
Music Scale
Generate scales with frequencies
Tap your tempo
Tap to find the BPM of a song or a heartbeat